Tejada of present has less blast than in past

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To San Diego: Orioles infielder Miguel Tejada and roughly $1.1 million in cash.

To Baltimore: Double-A pitcher Wynn Pelzer.

In keeping with the spirit of Throwback Thursdays, the Padres made a trade that works best as nostalgia.

Miguel Tejada was a stupendous ballplayer once upon a time, an iron man infielder with serious bop in his bat. He was the American League’s Most Valuable Player in 2002, drove home 150 runs in 2004 and accomplished all this during a span in which he played in 1,152 consecutive games.

He is not that guy now, nor is he exactly the same guy he represented himself to be for the bulk of his career. Tejada’s birth certificate is dated two years earlier than he once claimed — the document spells his surname as “Tejeda” — and the credibility of his statistics has suffered from a steroid taint traceable to pleading guilty of lying to Congress.

So the dude arrives with some significant baggage, and one season removed from his last game as a major league shortstop.

But he makes the Padres better, and here’s why: He’s a major league hitter in a lineup heretofore overpopulated with imposters. He reduces the Padres’ reliance on the overmatched Everth Cabrera. He provides manager Bud Black a palpable threat behind Adrian Gonzalez. And he might not have to be Ozzie Smith to be serviceable in the middle of the infield.

“All we really need is for him to make the routine ball, the routine play,” Gonzalez said after the Padres’ 3-2 walk-off win against the Los Angeles Dodgers. “We don’t need anything extraordinary.

“We position ourselves in the right place and then the ball’s hit nearby most of the time. We haven’t made a lot of spectacular plays out there this year. We’ve just always been in the right place. And that’s because the pitchers can execute their pitches. … There’s not a lot of range needed.”

Assessing Tejada’s acquisition during a third-inning news conference Thursday, Padres General Manager Jed Hoyer spoke of a range of possibilities, of using Tejada some at shortstop, of him spelling Chase Headley at third base against left-handed pitching, and some farther-fetched scenarios that might lead Headley back to left field.

Yet the simplest and least convulsive move would be to stick Tejada back at shortstop and send Cabrera out for more seasoning as the corresponding roster move.

According to most of baseball’s more sophisticated statistical measures, Tejada’s range has been contracting like Mel Gibson’s reputation. When news of the trade broke Thursday — the Orioles sending Tejada and cash to San Diego for Double-A pitcher Wynn Pelzer — former major league GM Jim Bowden opined via Twitter that the Padres “can’t put Tejada and lack at range at SS … he has to play 3B with Headley going back to left???”

Yet in the wake of Oscar Salazar’s ninth-inning heroism Thursday (achieved while pinch hitting for Cabrera), Black said he would likely start Tejada at shortstop if he shows up in time for tonight’s game against the Florida Marlins.